The comparative method (in comparative linguistics) is a technique used by linguists to demonstrate genetic relationships between languages. It aims to prove that two or more historically attested languages are descended from a single proto-language by comparing lists of cognate terms. From these cognate lists, regular sound correspondences between the languages are established, and a sequence of regular sound changes can then be postulated which allows the proto-language to be reconstructed from its daughter languages. Relation is deemed certain only if a partial reconstruction of the common ancestor is feasible, and if regular sound correspondences can be established with chance similarities ruled out. Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. ... Genetic, in linguistics, means due to descent from a common ancestor language, rather than borrowing at some time in the past between languages that were not necessarily descended from a common ancestor. ... Proto-language may refer to either: a language that preceded a certain set of given languages, or a system of communication during a stage in glottogony that may not yet be properly called a language. ... Cognate (Latin: cognatus co+gnatus, ie. ... In historical linguistics, a daughter language is a language descended from another language through a process of genetic descent. ...

Developed in the 19th century through the study of the Indo-European languages, the comparative method remains the standard by which mainstream linguists judge whether two languages are related, with alternative lexicostatistical methods widely considered to be unreliable. Potential problems with the comparative method have also arisen as a result of a number of advances in linguistic thought, in large part due to some of the "basic assumptions" of the comparative method. However, as Campbell (2004:146-7) observes, "What textbooks call the 'basic assumptions' of the comparative method might better be viewed as the consequences of how we reconstruct and of our views of sound change." The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, the Americas as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ...

Terminology

In the present context, related has a specific meaning: two languages are genetically related if they are descended from the same ancestor language^[1]. Thus, for example, Spanish and French are both descended from Latin. Therefore, French and Spanish are considered to belong to the same family of languages, the Romance languages.^[2] Genetic, in linguistics, means due to descent from a common ancestor language, rather than borrowing at some time in the past between languages that were not necessarily descended from a common ancestor. ... Proto-language may refer to either: a language that preceded a certain set of given languages, or a system of communication during a stage in glottogony that may not yet be properly called a language. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ...

Descent, in turn, is defined in terms of transmission across the generations: children learn a language from the parents' generation and are then influenced by their peers; they then transmit it to the next generation, and so on (how and why changes are introduced is a complicated, unresolved issue). A continuous chain of speakers across the centuries links Vulgar Latin to all of its modern descendants. Vulgar Latin, as in this political graffiti at Pompeii, was the way that ordinary people of the Roman Empire spoke, which was different from the Classical Latin used by the Roman elite. ...

However, it is possible for languages to have different degrees of relatedness. English, for example, is related to both German and Russian, but is more closely related to the former than it is to the latter. The reason for this is that although all three languages share a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European, English and German also share as a more recent common ancestor one of the daughter languages of Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic, whilst Russian does not. Therefore, English and German are considered to belong to a different subgroup of the Indo-European language family, the Germanic languages, than Russian (which belongs to the Slavic subgroup).^[3] The division of related languages into sub-groups by the comparative method is accomplished by finding languages with large numbers of shared linguistic innovations from the parent language; two languages having many shared retentions from the parent language is not sufficient evidence of a sub-group. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. ... Map of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, c. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, the Americas as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The Germanic languages are a group of related languages constituting a branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. ...  Countries where a West Slavic language is the national language  Countries where an East Slavic language is the national language  Countries where a South Slavic language is the national language The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup...

This definition of relatedness implies that even if two languages are quite similar in their vocabularies, they are not necessarily closely related. As a result of heavy borrowing over the years from Arabic into Persian, Modern Persian in fact takes more of its vocabulary from Arabic than from its direct ancestor, Proto-Indo-Iranian.^[4]. But under the definition just given, Persian is considered to be descended from Proto-Indo-Iranian, and not from Arabic. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ... Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... Persian (local name: Fārsī or Pārsī ) is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as well as by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ... A vocabulary is a set of words known to a person or other entity, or that are part of a specific language. ... Proto-Indo-Iranian, the Indo-European language spoken by the Indo-Iranians in the late 3rd millennium BC was a Satem language still not removed very far from the Proto-Indo-European language, and in turn only removed by a few centuries from the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda. ...

The comparative method is a method for proving relatedness in the sense just given, as well as a method for reconstructing the sound system and vocabulary of the common ancestral language and uncovering the sound changes the languages of a family have undergone. Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ...

Origin and development

The first known systematic attempt to prove the relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity of grammar and lexicon was made by the Hungarian János Sajnovics in 1770, when he attempted to demonstrate the relationship between Sami and Hungarian (work that was later extended to the whole Finno-Ugric language family in 1799 by his fellow countryman Samuel Gyarmathi),^[5] but the origin of modern historical linguistics is often traced back to Sir William Jones, an English philologist living in India, who in 1782 made his famous observation: Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ... Look up lexicon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... János Sajnovics was a Hungarian linguist and Jesuit. ... Sami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken in parts of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. ... Approximate geographical distribution of areas where indigenous Finno-Ugric languages are spoken. ... Samuel Gyarmathi was a Hungarian linguist. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... Sir William Jones Sir William Jones (September 28, 1746 – April 27, 1794) was an English philologist and student of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages. ... Philology is the study of ancient texts and languages. ...

“The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.” (Jones 1786, quoted in Lehman 1967 and Szemerényi 1996:4) The Sanskrit language (Skt. ... Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... The Celtic languages are the languages descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, spoken by ancient and modern Celts alike. ... Sketch of the first column of the Behistun Inscription Old Persian is the oldest attested Persid language. ...

An insight often attributed to Jones is conceiving of the idea of a proto-language, and consequently of the type of "family tree" model of language development (one proto-language splitting into various daughter languages, some of those then splitting again into further languages), upon which the comparative method is based. On the other hand, Jones' role in the development of these ideas has been recently challenged. According to the comparative linguist Lyle Campbell, the widely quoted passage from Jones has been removed from its proper context, and a reading of his work reveals his ideas of linguistic development as less clear. Many of the linguistic classifications proposed by Jones were also erroneous; he for instance connected Austronesian languages with Sanskrit, and failed to include Slavic in the Indo-European family.^[6] Proto-language may refer to either: a language that preceded a certain set of given languages, or a system of communication during a stage in glottogony that may not yet be properly called a language. ... Lyle Campbell is a linguist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the director of the universitys Center for American Indian Languages (CAIL). ... The Austronesian languages are a family of languages widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is an old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian Subcontinent, the classical literary language of the Hindus of India[1], a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ...  Countries where a West Slavic language is the national language  Countries where an East Slavic language is the national language  Countries where a South Slavic language is the national language The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup...

The comparative method itself developed out of the attempts to reconstruct the proto-language which Jones had hypothesized about, known as Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The first attempt to analyse the relationships between the Indo-European languages was made by the German linguist Franz Bopp in 1816. Though he did not attempt a reconstruction, he tried to prove that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit were related by systematically demonstrating that they shared a both common structure and a common lexicon.^[7]. The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, the Americas as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... Franz Bopp (September 14, 1791 - October 23, 1867) was a German linguist known for extensive comparative work on Indo-European languages. ...

It was the German scholar Friedrich Schlegel who in 1808 first stated the importance of using the oldest possible form of a language when trying to prove its relationships;^[8] then, in 1818, the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask developed the principle of regular sound changes to explain his observations of similarities between individual words in the Germanic languages and their cognates in Greek and Latin.^[9] It was another German, Jacob Grimm - better known for his Fairy Tales - who in Deutsche Grammatik (published 1819-37 in four volumes) first made use of something resembling the modern comparative method in attempting to show the development of the Germanic languages from a common origin, the first systematic study of diachronic language change.^[10] Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel (March 10, 1772 - January 11, 1829), German poet, critic and scholar, was the younger brother of August Wilhelm von Schlegel. ... Rasmus Christian Rask Rasmus Christian Rask (November 22, 1787 - November 14, 1832), Danish scholar and philologist, was born at Brandekilde in the island of Funen or Fyn in Denmark. ... The Brothers Grimm on a 1000DM banknote. ... Grimms Kinder- und Hausmärchen - Erster Theil (1812) Cover Art The world famous collection of German (and French) fairy tales Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM; English: Childrens and Household Tales), commonly known as Grimms Fairy Tales, was published by Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm... The Germanic languages are a group of related languages constituting a branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. ... The adjective diachronic (from Greek elements dia through and chronos time) means historically, over time. It is generally opposed to synchronic. ...

Both Rask and Grimm were unable to explain apparent exceptions to the sound laws that they had discovered. Though the German linguist Hermann Grassmann explained one of these anomalies with the publication of his sound law in 1862,^[11] it was in 1875 that a Danish scholar, Karl Verner, made a methodological breakthrough when he formulated the sound law which now bears his name, and which was the first sound law to use comparative evidence to show that a phonological change in one phoneme could depend on other factors within the same word, such as the neighbouring phonemes and the position of the accent:^[12] in other words, the modern concept of conditioning environments. Hermann Günther Grassmann (April 15, 1809, Stettin – September 26, 1877, Stettin) was a German polymath, renowned in his day as a linguist and now admired as a mathematician. ... Grassmanns Law is a rule of phonology in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an aspirated consonant is followed by an aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration. ... Karl Adolf Verner (* 7. ... It has been suggested that Grammatischer Wechsel be merged into this article or section. ... Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis given to certain syllables in a word. ...

Similar discoveries were made by a group of young, radical German academics at the University of Leipzig known as Junggrammatiker (usually rendered as Neogrammarians in English) in the late 1800s, leading them to conclude that all sound changes were ultimately regular, and resulting in two of them, Karl Brugmann and Hermann Osthoff, making in 1878 the famous statement that "sound laws have no exceptions".^[13] This revolutionary idea is fundamental to the modern comparative method, since the method necessarily assumes regular correspondences between sounds in related languages, and consequently regular sound changes from the proto-language. It was this Neogrammarian Hypothesis which led to the comparative method being applied to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European, with Indo-European being at that time by far the most well-studied and language family. Linguists working with other families soon followed suit, and the comparative method quickly became the established method for uncovering linguistic relationships.^[5] The University of Leipzig (Universität Leipzig), located in Leipzig in the Free State and former Kingdom of Saxony, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. ... The Neogrammarians (also Young Grammarians, German Junggrammatiker) were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change. ... Karl Brugmann was a German linguist (1849-1919) and one of the leading figures in Indo-European languages research. ... Hermann Osthoff (1847-1909) was a German linguist. ... Proto-Indo-European (PIE) may refer to: Proto-Indo-European language the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language Proto-Indo-European roots, A list of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European roots Categories: | ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, the Americas as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ...

Application

There is no concrete set of steps to be followed in the application of the comparative method, but linguists generally agree on the basic steps, which are as follows:^[14]

Assemble cognate lists

Genetic relationship between two (or more) languages can be established if they show a number of regular correspondences in native vocabulary, which means that there is a regularly recurring match between the phonetic structure of basic words with similar meanings.^[15] Thus, this step simply involves making lists of words which are likely cognates among the languages being compared. For example, looking at the Polynesian family^[16] we might come up with the following list (although in practice a real list would be much longer): The Polynesian languages are a group of related languages spoken in the region known as Polynesia. ...

Caution needs to be exercised to avoid including borrowings or false cognates in the list, which could skew or obscure the correct data.^[17] For example, there is a similarity between English taboo ([tæbu]) and the five Polynesian forms. Though this may seem to be a cognate, showing that English is genetically related to the Polynesian languages, it is not, as the similarity is due to the fact that English borrowed the word from Tongan.^[18] This problem can usually be overcome by using basic vocabulary (such as kinship terms, numbers, body parts, pronouns, and other basic terms^[19]). Nonetheless, even basic vocabulary can be borrowed. Finnish, for example, borrowed the word for "mother", äiti, from Gothic aiþei,^[20] while Pirahã, a Muran language of South America, borrowed all its pronouns from Nhengatu;^[21] likewise, English borrowed the pronouns "they", "them", and "their(s)" from Norse.^[22] Māori or Te Reo Māori, commonly shortened to Te Reo (literally the language) is an official language of New Zealand. ... Rarotongan is an East Central Polynesian language spoken mainly in the southern Cook Islands. ... The Hawaiian language is an Austronesian language that takes its name from that of the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. ... The Rapa Nui language (also Rapanui) is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Rapanui, the inhabitants of Easter Island. ... A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ... False cognates are a pair of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... The Pirahã language is a language spoken by Pirahã people of Brazil. ... Muran is a small language family of Amazonas, Brazil. ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun phrase. ... Língua Geral (Portuguese: literally, common or general language) is the name of two distinct lingua francas spoken in Brazil: Língua Geral Paulista, now extinct; and Língua Geral Amazônica with its modern descendant Nhengatu. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Old Norse is the Germanic language spoken by the inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300. ...

Establish correspondence sets

Once cognate lists are established, the next step is to determine the regular sound correspondences they exhibit. The notion of regular correspondence is very important here: mere phonetic similarity, as between English day and Latin dies (both with the same meaning), has no probative value.^[23] English initial d- does not regularly match Latin d-,^[24] and whatever sporadic matches can be observed are due either to chance (as in the above example) or to borrowing (e.g. Latin diabolus and English devil, both ultimately of Greek origin^[25]). The Neogrammarians first emphasized this point in the late 1800s, and their motto, "sound laws have no exceptions", has remained a fundamental axiom in historical linguistics to this day. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ... The Neogrammarians (also Young Grammarians, German Junggrammatiker) were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change. ...

For example, although the correspondence d- : d- (where the notation "A : B" means "A corresponds to B") in English and Latin day and dies above is not regular, English and Latin do exhibit a very regular correspondence of t- : d-.^[24] For example:^[26]

Since a truly systematic correspondence can hardly be accidental, if we can rule out alternative possibilities like massive borrowing, the correspondence can be attributed to common descent. If there are many regular correspondence sets of this kind (the more the better), and if they add up to a sensible pattern (one that could have been produced by known types of sound change), then common origin becomes a virtual certainty (particularly if some of the correspondences are non-trivial or unusual).^[15]

Discover which sets are in complementary distribution

During the time the comparative method was being developed (late 18th to late 19th century), two major developments occurred which improved the method's effectiveness.

First, it was found that many sound changes are conditioned by a particular context. Thus for example, in both Greek and Sanskrit, an aspirated stop evolved into an unaspirated one, but only if a second aspirate occurred later on in the same word;^[27] this is Grassmann's law, known to the Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini^[28] and promulgated as a historical discovery by Hermann Grassmann. The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is an old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian Subcontinent, the classical literary language of the Hindus of India[1], a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Grassmanns Law is a rule of phonology in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an aspirated consonant is followed by an aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration. ... Sanskrit grammatical tradition (, one of the six Vedanga disciplines) begins in late Vedic India, and culminates in the AṣṭādhyāyÄ« of Pāṇini (ca. ... Indian postage stamp depicting (2004), with the implication that he used (पाणिनि; IPA ) was an ancient Indian grammarian from Gandhara (traditionally 520–460 BC, but estimates range from the 7th to 4th centuries BC). ... Hermann Günther Grassmann (April 15, 1809, Stettin – September 26, 1877, Stettin) was a German polymath, renowned in his day as a linguist and now admired as a mathematician. ...

Second, it was found that sometimes sound changes occurred in contexts that were later lost. For instance, in Sanskrit velars (k-like sounds) were replaced by palatals (ch-like sounds) whenever the following vowel was *i or *e.^[29] Subsequent to this change, all instances of *e were replaced by a.^[30] The situation would have been unreconstructable, had not the original distribution of e and a been recoverable from the evidence of other Indo-European languages.^[31] Thus, for instance, Latin que, "and", preserves the original *e vowel that caused the consonant shift in Sanskrit: Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, the Americas as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...

Ca is the attested Sanskrit form for and. This finding was made independently by several scholars during the 1870s.

Verner's Law, discovered by Karl Verner in about 1875, is a similar case: the voicing of consonants in Germanic languages underwent a change that was determined by the position of the old Indo-European accent. Following the change, the accent shifted across the board to initial position.^[32] Verner solved the puzzle by comparing the Germanic voicing pattern with data from Greek and Sanskrit accent. It has been suggested that Grammatischer Wechsel be merged into this article or section. ... Karl Adolf Verner (* 7. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... The Germanic languages are a group of related languages constituting a branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis given to certain syllables in a word. ...

This stage of the comparative method, therefore, involves examining the correspondence sets discovered in step 2 and seeing which of them apply only in certain contexts. If two (or more) sets involve identical or similar sounds, and apply in complementary distribution, then the sets can be assumed to reflect a single original phoneme. This is because "some sound changes, particularly conditioned sound changes, can result in a proto-sound being associated with more than one correspondence set".^[33] Complementary distribution in linguistics refers to the relationship between two elements where one element can be found only in a particular environment and the other element can be found only in the opposite environment. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

To take another example, when we examine the Romance languages, descended from Latin, we find two different correspondence sets which both involve k: The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...

What we do in this situation is try to see if the two sets occur in complementary distribution (in which case they reflect a single proto-phoneme) or if both occur in identical environments (in which case they must both reflect separate proto-phonemes). In this case, we discover that French ʃ only occurs before a in the other languages (which becomes ɛ in French), while French k occurs elsewhere. Both sets 1 and 2 can therefore be assumed to reflect a single proto-phoneme (in this case *k, spelled <c> in Latin).^[34] The voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

A more complex case involves consonant clusters in Proto-Algonquian, which have been notoriously difficult to reconstruct. The Algonquianist Leonard Bloomfield used the reflexes of the clusters in four of the daughter languages of Proto-Algonquian to come up with the following correspondence sets:^[35] Proto-Algonquian (commonly abbreviated PA) is the name given to the posited proto-language of the languages of the Algonquian family. ... Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 - April 18, 1949) was an American linguist, whose influence dominated the development of structural linguistics in America between the 1930s and the 1950s. ...

Although all five correspondence sets overlap with one another in various places, they are not in complementary distribution, and so Bloomfield recognized that a different cluster must be reconstructed for each set (his reconstructions were, respectively, *hk, *xk, *čk, *šk, and çk; the modern reconstructions for these clusters are *hk, *tk, čk, šk, and rk, respectively, and two more clusters, reconstructed as *ʔk and ɬk, are recognized^[36]). The Anishinaabe language or the Ojibwe group of languages or Anishinaabemowin in Eastern Ojibwe syllabics) is the third most commonly spoken Native language in Canada (after Cree and Inuktitut), and the fourth most spoken in North America (behind Navajo, Cree, and Inuktitut). ... Fox (known by a variety of different names, including Mesquakie, Meskwaki, Mesquakie-Sauk, Mesquakie-Sauk-Kickapoo, Sac and Fox, and others) is an Algonquian Indian language, spoken by around 1000 Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo in various locations in the Midwestern United States. ... Plains Cree is an Algonquian language, often considered a dialect of Cree, spoken by about 34,000 people in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Montana. ... The Menominee language is an Algonquian language spoken on the Menominee (Menomini) Nation lands in Northern Wisconsin in the United States. ...

Reconstruct proto-phonemes

This step tends to be much more subjective than the previous ones. A linguist here has to rely mostly on their general intuitions about what types of sound changes are likely and which are unlikely. For example, the voicing of voiceless plosives between vowels is an extremely common sound change, occurring in languages all over the world, whilst the devoicing of voiced plosives between vowels is extremely uncommon. Therefore, if a linguist were comparing two languages with a correspondence of -t- : -d- between vowels, they would reconstruct the proto-phoneme as being *-t-, and assume that it became voiced to -d- in the second language (unless they had a very good reason not to). This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Sometimes, sound changes occur that are extremely unusual or unexpected. The Proto-Indo-European word for two, for example, is reconstructed as *duwō, which is reflected in Classical Armenian as erku. Several other cognates demonstrate that the change *d- → erk- in the history of Armenian was a regular one.^[37] Similarly, in Bearlake, a dialect of the Athabaskan language of Slavey, there has been a sound change of Proto-Athabaskan *ts → Bearlake kʷ.^[38] It is very unlikey that *d- changed directly into erk- and *ts into kʷ, but instead they must have gone through several intermediate steps to arrive at the later forms. The lesson here is that with enough sound changes, a given sound can change into just about any other sound. This is why it is not phonetic similarity which matters when utilizing the comparative method, but regular sound correspondences.^[23] The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. ... Grabar meaning literary, Armenian was very developed by the time it came to be written down at the beginning of the 5th century. ... Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan or Athapaskan) is the name of a large group of distantly related Native American peoples, also known as the Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes, and of their language family. ... The Slavey language is a spoken language used among the Slavey Native American people of Canada. ...

Another assumption used in determining a proto-phoneme is that our reconstruction should ideally involve as few sound changes as possible to arrive at the modern reflexes in the daughter languages. In other words, unless there is persuasive evidence to the contrary, we should reconstruct for a proto-phoneme whatever value is the most common reflex in the daughter languages. For example, in the Algonquian languages, we find the following correspondence set:^[39][40] Pre-contact distribution of Algonquian languages The Algonquian (also Algonkian) languages are a subfamily of Native American languages that includes most of the languages in the Algic language family (the two Algic languages that are not Algonquian are Wiyot and Yurok of northwestern California). ...

The simplest reconstruction for this set would be either *m or *b. Both *m → b and *b → m (where "*A → B" means "*A becomes B") are conceivable sound changes, so the principle of reconstructing "likely" changes over "unlikely" ones is not useful here. Instead, because the reflex of this proto-phoneme is m in five of the languages compared here, and b in only one of them, if we reconstruct *b then we need to assume five separate changes of *b → m, whereas if we reconstruct *m, we only need to assume a single change of *m → b in one language in the family. Since we are working on the assumption that our reconstructions should require the fewest number of changes possible to arrive at the modern reflexes, we would reconstruct *m here. The Anishinaabe language or the Ojibwe group of languages or Anishinaabemowin in Eastern Ojibwe syllabics) is the third most commonly spoken Native language in Canada (after Cree and Inuktitut), and the fourth most spoken in North America (behind Navajo, Cree, and Inuktitut). ... The Mikmaq language (also spelled Míkmaq, Migmaq, and Micmac) is an Eastern Algonquian language spoken by around 7,300 Mikmaq in Canada, and another 1,200 in United States, out of a total ethnic Mikmaq population of roughly 20,000. ... Cree is the name for a group of closely-related Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 50,000 speakers across Canada, from Alberta to Labrador. ... Lenape (also called Delaware) is a language in the Algonquian language family spoken by the Lenape people. ... Blackfoot is the name of any of the Algonquian languages spoken by the Blackfoot tribe of Native Americans, who currently live in the northwestern plains of North America. ... The Arapaho language (also Arapahoe) language is a Plains Algonquian language spoken almost entirely by elders in Wyoming. ...

Examine the reconstructed system typologically

In the final step, the linguist takes all the proto-phonemes they have reconstructed using steps 1-4, and checks to see how the system fits with what is currently known about typological constraints. For example, if the reconstructed phonemes fit together in the following hypothetical system, the linguist would be suspicious, because languages generally (though not always) tend to maintain symmetry in their phonemic inventories: This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Linguistic typology is the typology that classifies languages by their features. ...

In this hypothetical reconstructed system, there is only one voiced plosive, *b, and although there is an alveolar and a velar nasal, *n and *ŋ, there is no corresponding labial nasal. In this case, we would have to return to step 4 and reevaluate our earlier conclusions. In this case, we would try to figure out if there is any evidence to suggest that what we earlier reconstructed as *b is in fact *m, or evidence that what we earlier reconstructed as *n and *ŋ are in fact *d and *g. The voiced bilabial plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. ... The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The bilabial nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

Even a symmetrical system can be typologically suspicious. For example, the Proto-Indo-European plosive inventory, as traditionally reconstructed,^[41] is as follows: The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. ...

Since the mid-20th century, a number of linguists have argued that this system is, at best, very suspicious typologically.^[42] They state that it is extremely unlikely, or maybe even impossible, for a language to have a voiced aspirated (breathy voice) series without a corresponding voiceless aspirated series. These linguists therefore argue, on typological grounds, that we need to reevaluate the traditional reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European. A potential solution was provided by Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, who argued that the series traditionally reconstructed as plain voiced should in fact be reconstructed as glottalized — either implosive (ɓ, ɗ, ɠ) or ejective (pʼ, tʼ, kʼ). The plain voiceless and voiced aspirated series would thus be seen as just voiceless and voiced, with aspiration being a non-distinctive quality of both.^[43] This example of the application of linguistic typology to linguistic reconstruction has become known as the Glottalic Theory. It has a large number of proponents but is not generally accepted.^[44] Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... A labiovelar consonant is a consonant made with two blockages, one at the lips (labial) and the other at the soft palate (velar). ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... Breathy voice or murmured voice is a phonation in which the vocal folds are vibrating as in normal voicing, but the glottal closure is incomplete, so that the voicing is somewhat inefficient and air continues to leak between the vocal folds throughout the vibration cycle with audible friction noise. ... Tamaz (Thomas) V. Gamkrelidze (born October 23, 1929) is a distinguished Georgian linguist, orientalist and public benefactor, Academician (since 1974) and President (since February, 2005) of the Georgian Academy of Sciences (GAS), Director of the Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies of GAS (since 1973), Dr.Sci. ... Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov is a prominent Russian philologist and Indo-Europeanist probably best known for his glottalic theory of Indo-European consonantism and for placing the Indo-European urheimat in the area of the Lake Urmia. ... See also Glottalic consonant Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. ... Implosive consonants are plosives (rarely affricates) with a glottalic ingressive airstream mechanism. ... Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants in a language. ... According to the glottalic theory, Indo-European had ejective plosives instead of voiced ones. ...

The reconstruction of proto-sounds and their historical transformations enables us to proceed further: we can compare grammatical morphemes (word-forming affixes and inflectional endings), patterns of declension and conjugation, and so on. The full reconstruction of an unrecorded protolanguage can never be complete (for example, proto-syntax is far more elusive than phonology or morphology, and all elements of linguistic structure undergo inevitable erosion and gradual loss or replacement over time), but a consistent partial reconstruction can and must be attempted as proof of genetic relationship. For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... For other uses, see Morphology. ...

Limitations

A number of difficulties with aspects related to the method are now recognized,^[45] but the comparative method is still seen as being one of the most valuable tools in comparative linugistics, and linguists continue to use it widely; other proposed approaches to determining linguistic relationships and reconstructing proto-languages, such as glottochronology and mass lexical comparison, are considered flawed and unreliable by nearly all linguists.^[46] Linguists recognize, however, that results obtained with the comparative method are not historical fact. Fox (1997:141-2), for example, concludes: The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... Mass lexical comparison or mass comparison is a highly controversial method developed by the well-known linguist Joseph Greenberg to find genetic relationships among languages in the remote past, beyond the limits of the traditional comparative method, or in situations where there are too many languages to practically apply the...

“The Comparative Method as such is not, in fact, historical; it provides evidence of linguistic relationships to which we may give a historical interpretation. ...[Our increased knowledge about the historical processes involved] has probably made historical linguists less prone to equate the idealizations required by the method with historical reality. ...Provided we keep [the interpretation of the results and the method itself] apart, the Comparative Method can continue to be used in the reconstruction of earlier stages of languages.”

Neogrammarian Hypothesis

The foundation of the comparative method, and of comparative linguistics in general, is the Neogrammarians' fundamental assumption that "sound laws have no exceptions." When it was initially proposed, critics of the Neogrammarians proposed an alternate position, summarized by the maxim "each word has its own history".^[47] The so-called Neogrammarian Hypothesis is now well-established and well-supported, though there remain some situations in which its application can yield faulty results. The Neogrammarians (also Young Grammarians, German Junggrammatiker) were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change. ...

Borrowings, areal diffusion and random mutations

Even the Neogrammarians recognized that, apart from the general sound change laws, languages are also subject to borrowings from other languages and other sporadic changes (such as irregular inflections, compounding, and abbreviation) that affect one word at a time, or small subsets of words. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ...

While borrowed words should be excluded from the analysis, on the grounds that they are not genetic by definition, they do add noise to the data, and thus may hide systematic laws or distort their analysis. Moreover, there is the danger of circular reasoning — namely, of assuming that a word has been borrowed solely because it does not fit the current assumptions about the regular sound laws.

Attempts to apply the comparative method to languages which have been affected by the process of areal diffusion can also be problematic. This is, in essence, a subtle form of borrowing, which can take place when a significant number of speakers of one language have some competence in another, possibly unrelated language. This may lead to the languages acquiring phonological characteristics from one another, sometimes even without the conscious borrowing of lexical or morphological forms, with the result that the two languages may end up appearing to be genetically related when in fact they are not. It is also possible that two or more unrelated languages may appear to be related as the result of them all individually undergoing areal diffusion from a third unrelated language.^[48] In linguistics, an areal feature is any typological feature shared by languages within the same geographical area. ... Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... Definition A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of words that are the same in basic meaning. ... In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ...

The other exceptions to the sound laws are a more serious problem, because they occur in generic language transmission. One example of such a sporadic change, with no apparent logical reason, is the Spanish word for "word", palabra. By regular sound changes from the Latin parabŏla, it should have become parabla, but the r and l changed places by sporadic metathesis.^[49] Metathesis is a sound change that alters the order of phonemes in a word. ...

Analogy

A source of sporadic changes that was recognized by the Neogrammarians themselves was analogy, in which a word is sporadically changed to be closer to another word in the lexicon which is perceived as being somehow related to it. For example, the Russian word for nine, by regular sound changes from Proto-Slavic, should have been /nʲevʲatʲ/, but is in fact /dʲevʲatʲ/. It is believed that the initial nʲ- changed to dʲ- due to influence of the word for "ten" in Russian, /dʲesʲatʲ/.^[50] Analogy is either the cognitive process of transferring or giving information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. ... Proto-Slavic is the proto-language from which Old Church Slavonic and other Slavic languages later emerged. ...

Gradual application

More recently, William Labov and other linguists who have studied contemporary language changes in detail have discovered that even a systematic sound change is at first applied in an unsystematic fashion, with the percentage of its occurrence in a person's speech dependent on various social factors.^[51] Often the sound change begins to affect some words in a language, and then gradually spreads to others, a process known as lexical diffusion. While not invalidating the Neogrammarians' axiom that "sound laws have no exceptions", this does seem to show that sound laws do not always apply to all lexical items at the same time. As Hock (1991:446-7) notes, "While it probably is true in the long run every word has its own history, it is not justified to conclude as some linguists have, that therefore the Neogrammarian position on the nature of linguistic change is falsified." Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from an article revision dated 2006-02-04, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Lexical diffusion is the theory that sound change originates in a single word or a small group of words and then spreads by analogy to other words with a similar phonological make-up, but may not spread to all words in which it potentially could apply. ...

Problems with the Tree Model

Another weakness of the comparative method lies in its reliance on the Tree Model (German Stammbaum).^[52] In this model, daughter languages are seen as branching out from the proto-language, gradually growing more and more distant from the proto-language through accumulated phonological, morpho-syntactic, and lexical changes; and possibly splitting into further daughter languages. This model is usually represented by upside-down tree-like diagrams. For example, here is a diagram of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages, spoken throughout the southern and western United States and Mexico:^[53] Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... In Linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a given language. ... Look up lexicon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Pre-contact distribution of Northern Uto-Aztecan languages (note: this map does not show the distribution in Mexico) The Uto-Aztecan (also Uto-Aztekan) is a Native American language family. ...

The comparative method has been criticsed for its reliance on the Tree Model, used here to represent the Uto-Aztecan language family. (Families are in bold, individual languages in italics. Not all of the branches and languages are shown, for lack of space.)

Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (948x325, 66 KB) Summary Family tree diagram created in Microsoft Word of some of the sub-families and languages of the Uto-Aztecan family. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (948x325, 66 KB) Summary Family tree diagram created in Microsoft Word of some of the sub-families and languages of the Uto-Aztecan family. ... Pre-contact distribution of Northern Uto-Aztecan languages (note: this map does not show the distribution in Mexico) The Uto-Aztecan (also Uto-Aztekan) is a Native American language family. ...

Wave Model

Since languages change gradually, there are long periods in which different dialects of a language, as they evolve into separate languages, remain in contact with one another and influence each other. Therefore, the Tree Model does not reflect the reality of how languages change, as even once they are completely separated, languages which are near to one another will continue to influence each other, often sharing grammatical, phonological, and lexical innovations. A change in one language of a family will often spread to neighboring languages; and multiple waves of change may partially overlap like waves on the surface of a pond, across language and dialect boundaries, each with its own randomly delimited range.^[54] The following diagram illustrates this conception of language change, called the Wave Model:

The Wave Model has been proposed as an alternative model of language change.

However, Hock (1991:454) observes: Image File history File links Wave_Model_Schmidt. ... Image File history File links Wave_Model_Schmidt. ...

“The discovery in the late nineteenth century that isoglosses can cut across well-established linguistic boundaries at first created considerable attention and controversy. And it became fashionable to oppose a wave theory to a tree theory....Today, however, it is quite evident that the phenomena referred to by these two terms are complementary aspects of linguistic change....However, in practice, it is generally preferable to use the traditional, simple tree model - if necessary supplemented by synchronic isogloss maps for relevant historical stages.” Isoglosses on the Faroe Islands An isogloss is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, e. ...

Non-uniformity of the proto-language

Another assumption implicit in the methodology of the comparative method is that the proto-language is uniform. This is problematic, as even in extremely small language communities there are always dialect differences, whether based on area, gender, class, or other factors (the Pirahã language of Brazil is spoken by only several hundred people, but has at least two different dialects, one spoken by men and one by women, for example^[55]). Therefore, the single proto-language reconstructed by the comparative method is an idealized language which never existed. This may not be as serious an issue as it at first appears, however; Campbell (2004:146-7) for instance, points out: A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... The Pirahã language is a language spoke